New Stranton’s commercial business district will never draw unqualified praise from those who appreciate fine architecture. Its founding fathers having been practical nineteenth-century entrepreneurs whose idea of beauty was a favourable balance sheet, the few buildings to have survived both the attentions of the Luftwaffe and the legalised vandalism of the 1960s show little of the neo-Classical majesty associated with most other Victorian industrial towns. The one structure of any note is a limestone church with a tall, square-sectioned tower surmounted at one corner by a conical appendage that has always put me in mind of a witch’s hat, thus giving it an eccentric, almost disrespectful profile quite out of keeping with its function. Located on an island in the centre of a busy plaza recently co-opted into the traffic management scheme brought into operation after the new shopping precinct was opened next to the junction where the roads from Stockton, Durham and Northcroft converge, it looks east down a wide boulevard — not tree-lined, not in New Stranton — which strives to reach the sea but instead is truncated by the railway line as it curves inland to circumvent the docks. Halfway along this road to nowhere, between the Midland bank and a cellar bar with such an unsavoury reputation I’m risking my own good name simply by not having crossed the road to avoid it, can be found the chambers of Barton & Harris, attorneys at law — and a waiting room so dark and dismal it would have a pools winner whose first novel had just been published to ecstatic reviews staring at the floor and wondering where it had all gone wrong.

“She’s late,” complains Elaine Smailes, shifting in her chair as she fusses with the collar of her verbose sunflower-pattern maternity dress. “I knew this’d ‘appen. Didn’ I say so, mam?”

Carol Vasey looks at her watch. Dressed in an abstemious dark green suit, she’s a handsome, vigorous woman in her early fifties, with a gracious manner and a pleasant smile. If her russet curls are speckled with grey, and her features are starting to take on the weathered appearance of one rapidly moving past her prime, there’s a sparkle to her eyes that might have ensnared many a younger admirer before the good doctor came along — though in his case there’s a better than even chance that more pecuniary factors were at work.

“It’s only just gone ten to,” she says. “We’ve still got plenty of time.”

“I told her a quarter to three, on the dot. I mean, she only ‘as to drive from flippin’ Norton.”

Elaine’s fingers move from her dress to her necklace to her stiff auburn perm, and finally settle for cradling her swelling stomach. This, I gather, will be her fourth child, due at the end of July a few weeks before she turns twenty-eight. A matriarch in the making, and she seems to be revelling in it.

The object of Elaine’s irritation is her sister Trisha, who works as a peripatetic music teacher in the Teesside area. In what promises to be a fairly lengthy series of transactions, she is to be given the deeds to 6 Redheugh Close — Kerrie has brought letters from her siblings relinquishing their share of the property in return for a cash sum to be decided this afternoon — while Elaine and her husband will take possession of the empty house at 16 Albion Crescent. Good luck to them all if they’re thinking of liquidating their assets in the current economic climate.

As for why I’m here, I really can’t say. Kerrie didn’t remind me about the appointment until we’d left Bywell, adding almost as an afterthought that Trisha had telephoned her at the Gladstone yesterday evening to request that I be present. It certainly has me wondering; from what I remember of her, I can’t believe she would take the trouble to do that if all she had in mind was exchanging gossip with an old school chum.

And if she talks about Richard?

You’ll be okay. You’re Ruth now. Richard’s gone, and he isn’t coming back.

Repeat after me...

“Will you wait here for her, sweetheart?”

Kerrie is tapping my wrist. Carol and Elaine are already on their feet, following the receptionist through the heavy oak door at the far end of the room. I nod my head and reach in my pocket for my cigarettes, glad that I can light up without fear of censure now I’m no longer sitting beside an expectant mother.

Left alone, I do my best to organise the jumble of disordered evidence the morning has dumped into my mental ‘in’ tray. It’s a Herculean task; every line of reasoning I pursue leads straight into a cul-de-sac. Maybe I should make up an excuse to quiz Yvette de Monnier, see if she can’t provide some of the missing pieces.

Good thinking. She’ll be thrilled that the hotels’s odd-job girl is taking such a keen interest in her affairs.

“Ruth…?”

My head shoots up at the sound of a voice that until a couple of hours ago I’d lost hope of ever hearing again.

The flowing mane of bright red hair that went with it has been cut into a page boy, yet I’d know those bewitching green eyes, that pert nose and the seductive curl of those delicate lips anywhere. How many nights did I lie awake, imagining I was holding this girl in my arms and whispering sweet words of love as she rested her head on my shoulder? How many hours did I ache for the touch of her warm flesh against mine? How many times did I take a detour past Lumley Square, hoping that once, just once, she might walk through her front door as I was passing the gate and–

Well I’ll be damned...

She hasn’t yet grown out of her trademark jeans and trainers, but there can be no denying that Trisha Hodgson, who time and again stated unequivocally that she would never allow any man to tie her down with a child, would have to be wearing a T-shirt at least two sizes bigger if she was to have any hope of concealing the fact that in a little over three months she’ll be competing with her sister for first use of the delivery room.

“You’re pregnant...” I gasp, my cigarette forgotten.

“Not much slips past you, does it?” she laughs. “We didn’t plan it, but that’s life.”

“Your mum said you weren’t married...“

“God, how far behind the times are you? Next thing you’ll be having a go at me for living in sin, or bringing a bastard child into the world.”

“I didn’t mean it like that.”

“It’s obvious what you meant. I thought after your experience of holy matrimony you’d have known better.” Her frown mutates into the elfish grin that lassoed my heart so many years ago. “Come on, give me a hug.”

My cheek against hers. Feeling the outline of her bra through the back of her T-shirt. Her scent enveloping me. Doesn’t it just sum up my relationship with Dame Fortune that I had to become female before I could get this close to the girl I loved for so long?

“You’ve gone ginger,” she says as we separate and hold each another at arm’s length. “And your tits are still bigger than mine.”

This is excruciating. Despite the fact that I no longer feel any physical attraction for this young woman — or more probably because of it — my emotions are in turmoil.

“If you’re Alice Patricia Hodgson, they’ve started without you,” says the receptionist, coming to my aid before I burst out crying.

“Alice?” I mouth to her.

“I kept that quiet, didn’t I? Actually I’ve been starting to use it more often lately. Must be getting mumsy.” She releases my hands. “Listen, I’m going to do my bit and sneak out of there as quickly as I can. After that I want to talk to you about something. Or rather someone. Anywhere, as long as it’s private.”

Richard. It has to be.

“Uh...the Gladstone?”

“If we’re on our own, fine.”

“What’s this all about?” I fail to stop myself asking.

The receptionist is holding the door open. Trisha smiles at her, then leans forward to place her lips by my ear.

“The woman in that room,” she hisses. “She’s not my mother.”

At the end of my Chemistry ‘mock’ O level examination — the last ninety minutes of which I had spent creating a mathematical formula to estimate the number of tiles in the assembly hall floor, such was the swiftness with which I had committed my woefully inadequate knowledge of that subject to paper — I sought out one of the invigilating teachers and asked him if he didn’t find walking up and down between rows of desks for three hours intolerably boring.

“Boring?” he chortled. “Of course it’s boring. But in this profession boring is good. Boring means going home and not wanting to kick the living daylights out of the dog. I go down on my knees every night and beg the Almighty for another boring day. There’s an old Chinese saying, Brookbank: may you live in interesting times. It was intended as a curse.”

Seven years later, I think I’m beginning to understand the point he was trying to get across.

Trisha Hodgson is standing in the corner of my room, flicking through my record collection. She hasn’t said anything to support the allegation she made earlier, but I know she’ll bring the subject up before many more minutes have gone by.

When she does...

She’s not my mother.

‘Interesting times’ indeed.

I take off my jacket and hang it on the back of the door. When I turn round, I see Trisha holding her middle. Her face is radiant.

“It’s kicking,” she smiles. “Come on, quickly!”

Unsure of the etiquette in these situations, I walk towards her and tentatively extend my hand. She places it on her bulge; for a second nothing happens, then a sudden movement inside her makes me jump.

“Wow!” is all I can say.

“You’ve never done this before, have you?”

I shake my head, and as our eyes meet there forms between us a bond that can only have been engendered by dint of us sharing the potential for motherhood. It seems to soak into the very fibre of my being, assuring me that the thought of carrying new life within my body isn’t so unreasonable after all.

The moment passes, but I can sense that something has changed.

Something important.

Trisha’s glow fades. I sit on the edge of the bed and gesture for her to join me.

Within seconds the dam is blown wide apart.

“I know what I said at the solicitor’s sounds stupid, but hear me out, okay? That is not our mam. Oh, it’s her body, all right. She’s still got the same pattern of moles on her neck and the same little scar on her index finger. But I don’t recognise the person who’s in there. And before you go on about her amnesia, she told me herself it’s only her memory of the night dad died that’s been lost. Other than that she’s supposed to be suffering from no lasting effects at all.”

My mouth feels as if every last molecule of moisture within it has evaporated. If Ruth was in Northcroft when Bob Hodgson drowned, she could easily have swapped with Carol Vasey before setting up the car crash that put an end to Richard Brookbank’s body.

Christ, I shook hands with the woman less than an hour ago.

But why take Carol’s place and lose thirty years of her life? For a share of Helen Sutton’s fortune?

That cat won’t catch any mice. If all she wanted was filthy lucre why didn’t she simply exchange bodies with Helen? Then she could have got her hands on the lot — and at once, not four and a half months later.

“Have you said anything to Elaine?” I ask in as relaxed a voice as I can put on.

“Of course not. She’d think I was away with the pixies.”

“And yet you’re willing to confide in me.”

“You’re not likely to go running to mam — or worse, that pillock she married. Besides, once I’ve finished I can walk out of here and never have to face you again. You will keep this to yourself, won’t you?”

“Course I will.”

“All right,” she sighs. “I found out I was pregnant at the end of November. Mam didn’t think I should have it, said I should put my career first. Adamant about it, she was. Then came the accident, if that’s what you want to call it.”

“Are you saying it wasn’t?”

“I’ll get on to that. First I have to tell you what happened after mam was discharged from hospital. To begin with she seemed right as rain. She got through the funeral okay, sorted out dad’s affairs, arranged to take early retirement…she even talked about getting away from it all once the inquest was over and done with. I said to Elaine, don’t you think she’s a bit too cheerful, all things considered? She just said we should be grateful mam’s taken it so well instead of sitting there all miserable and depressed day after day.

“A week or so before Christmas I decided I was definitely going to have this baby. I’m not against abortion on principle, I mean I’m not religious or anything, but I felt what with dad dying, and poor Miss Sutton and Snapper Brookbank as well — God, you used to sit next to him when we were in her class, remember? — it just felt wrong to end what would eventually become another life. You do understand, don’t you?”

I give her arm a gentle squeeze.

“Yeah...yeah, sure...”

“Well, I picked my moment and then I told her. Ruth, she went completely off it. She was horrified I’d even contemplate a termination. I said it was your idea mam, but she wouldn’t have it. She said I must’ve got hold of the wrong end of the stick cause she’d never say that, not to anyone. And when I said thanks for all the sleepless nights she looked at me as if I was a stain on the carpet. It’s been downhill ever since. I’m like a stranger to her.”

Trisha rambles on in similar vein for several minutes. She’s come to the point of tears, and although it would be well within the bounds of acceptable behaviour to put my arm around her shoulder or hold her hand I can’t bring myself to initiate that level of intimacy. Pangs of shame and regret slice through me as I realise that I want her to leave. She represents the past, and I must look to the future.

But she isn’t going to let me off the hook that easily.

“The only other person I’ve talked to about this is Paul — Elaine’s husband. He was really fond of dad. They used to do all sorts together — went fishing, played golf, looked after dad’s allotment. Paul didn’t believe the story they printed in the papers. He said there wasn’t a cat in hell’s chance that dad would’ve gone down to the breakwater by himself on a night like that — unless he’d seen that mam was already there, and he thought she was in trouble.

“So he kept his ear to the ground, and one of the things he heard was that a couple of the teenagers who found dad’s body on the beach sneaked back through the police cordon just before it got dark and saw them zipping two more bodies into black bags. They said one was a woman, half-naked and as bald as a billiard ball. I realise it sounds like they were making it up to get attention, but bald? Who’d expect anyone to believe that?”

I can hardly breathe.

I’m guessing Sorina’s her name. But what the hell is a ‘kuzkardesh gara’?

I don’t know...but it seems to me that what we’ve stumbled on is a kit to turn somebody into one.

“Do you think it was…?”

“Miss Sutton? Yeah, I do. Maybe she had cancer, and the treatment had made all her hair fall out. That might be why she was going to pack in teaching. But we can’t check these girls’ stories because both their families have moved, and nobody knows where. You might also have noticed that the Kirkham, where mam was supposed to have gone for help, has shut down. Apparently the landlord’s been given a pub in Scarborough, a stone’s throw from Peasholm Park. He’ll be raking it in this summer, no doubt. Oh, and the sister in charge of the ward mam was admitted to has disappeared as well. Left her job for no reason at all. It’s like the lot of them have either been silenced or paid off.”

Heart attack, it said in the Herald. But you hear all sorts in this trade. Like Bob’s wasn’t the only body those kids found on Carr House Sands the next day.

It’s all starting to come together.

Helen must have used the equipment in the casket to try and turn herself into a copy of the kuzkardesh gara in the photograph. Perhaps it was the only way she could think of to exorcise the guilt she felt after what had happened to Sarah-Jane Collingwood. But whatever was going through her mind, someone in authority didn’t want her transformation to become public knowledge. Instead they put out the cause of her death as heart failure.

And if the third body belonged to Richard Brookbank…

By slow increments a sequence takes shape in my mind. Helen welcoming Richard with open arms, only to learn that he wasn’t the person she remembered. The two of them on the breakwater, Helen having fled there in blind panic. Bob Hodgson braving the elements in an attempt to persuade them to come back. Carol following him down the steps.

One person survived.

That person now claims to have no memory of those events.

And her own daughter doesn’t recognise her.

Ruth used the transfer device on Carol Hodgson, who then drowned in Richard Brookbank’s body. It’s the only explanation that fits.

But that can’t be the end of the story. Sylvia said that the inquest into Bob’s death was carried by several national newspapers. His widow even agreed to be interviewed by one of them. Is it likely that Ruth would court such publicity, even if she believed that by swapping with Carol her trail had gone cold? She definitely wouldn’t have drawn yet more attention to herself by getting married so soon.

Besides, the woman at Barton & Harris wasn’t her. I’m convinced of it.

So who the hell is she?

I glance down to see that my fingers are resting on the back of Trisha’s hand. I let them stay there; it’s scant comfort, but it’s all I can give her.

Then I remember the message carved on the headstone.

Farewell, my love. You died to save the women of the whole world.

Mademoiselle Malraux knew damn well that Helen didn’t die of a heart attack. But what else does she know? What was she doing on the night when her former lover drowned?

Just as important, where is she now?

I have to give Trisha all sorts of promises and assurances before she’ll go. I intend to keep none of them; if she’s as hell-bent on discovering the truth as Kerrie Latimer, I won’t have a life to call my own.

Which doesn’t stop me continuing to wonder, as I watch her red Mini Minor turn the corner into Gladstone Street, what Ruth wanted from Helen Sutton and why she was so anxious to gain her trust.

Because the answers to those questions are the keys to this whole mystery.

An hour before the evening meal is to be served — it’s Thursday so it must be mince and dumplings — I unlock the door on the first-floor landing marked PRIVATE, enter Norah and Sylvia’s flat and run myself a bath. Lowering my body into the soapy water until it’s at the level of my chin, I stretch my arms along the sides of the tub, lean back and let the trials and tribulations of the last twenty-four hours ooze from the pores of my skin.

Richard something or other, in a car accident.

Go away. You can’t hurt me any more.

My right hand moves to the sparse down at the base of my abdomen. From there it travels unobstructed to the silky smoothness between the tops of my thighs. I don’t know why, but the idea of my feminine curves being sullied by the ugly appendages that used to dangle so awkwardly from my crotch suddenly seems ridiculous.

Something has changed.

I lean back, raise my right knee and let my eyelids droop…

Thunder and lightning. Waves as tall as houses. The screams of terrified children. Tearful couples saying farewell to one another. Grown men fighting over life jackets as the order to abandon ship is relayed across the crackling tannoy. A muscular arm pushing me roughly aside, its owner fully aware of the bulging maternity dress beneath my coat. A priest offering the last rites to those the rafts and dinghies have no room for. The horrific emptiness in the eyes of a young crew member who knows he will shortly die. The frantic struggles of the drowning as they go under for the final time. Adrift...

The water has grown tepid. I sit up, splashing my face in an effort to disperse the remnants of my dream, so reluctant are the sounds and images to disappear.

Jesus, there’s some strange stuff going on in my head. Then again, after everything I’ve heard today that shouldn’t come as a surprise.

I climb from the tub, my hand drawn as if by unseen lines of force to my middle.

You’ve never done this before, have you?

What is it like, knowing you’re carrying within your womb an organism that will one day develop into a completely new member of the human race? How will I ever summon up the courage to find out?

Yet I can’t believe I’ll let the opportunity slip through my fingers…

Just what have you awakened in me, Trisha?

I suppose it had to happen sooner or later. However loudly I might rail against the notion, my genetic make-up is geared towards producing offspring. As the adjustment process reaches its conclusion and my mind becomes fully attuned to the body it now inhabits I can expect the urge to propagate my DNA to manifest itself more and more often, and in a variety of ways.

Damn those pesky double helixes.

At least I’m in no great rush. I’ve got years before my biological clock starts ticking down.

And when I consider the psychological obstacles I’ll have to overcome before I can start knitting my first pair of booties I reckon I’ll need them.

I return to my Fortress of Solitude, carrying the driest of the three pairs of jeans I found in the airing cupboard. Kerrie is standing by the door, frowning.

“Oh, there you are,” she says.

“Here I am. I assume everything’s done and dusted?”

She takes me by the elbow.

“Come and talk to me.”

To hear is to obey. Pulling the belt of my dressing gown tightly around me, I follow her down to her room.

“What’s up?” I ask once she’s shut the door behind me.

“After we’d finished at the solicitor’s I showed Carol the notebook.” She lights a cigarette and hands me the packet. “I didn’t tell her where it came from or how I got hold of it. You know what she did? She stared at me as if I’d just pulled out a pornographic magazine. Then she was off, and her daughter with her. Not a word from either of them. They knew what it was. They’d been through that house. So why did they leave the casket there?”

I close my eyes out of sheer vexation. Is this ever going to end?

“I wouldn’t worry about it,” I murmur.

“No, I don’t suppose you would. You’re not the one who has to decide what to tell your family tomorrow.”

I ignore the reprimand. I’m not willing to betray Trisha’s confidence just to demonstrate my loyalty to someone I only met the day before yesterday. In any case, regurgitating what she told me would only muddy the waters further.

Kerrie sits on the chair beside the window and looks out at the clouds threatening yet more rain before dusk.

“Three weeks ago I lost my job,” she confesses. “I worked in a record shop in Fareham that closed when the owner sold up. This money couldn’t have come at a better time. But I won’t feel comfortable using it until I know why Helen left it to my dad. I’ve been here for forty-eight hours now, and I feel as if I’m hardly any further forward than when I started.”

“I appreciate that, but I don’t see what else I can do…”

She turns her face from me. I don’t react, other than to pick up my clothes and begin walking towards the door. But before I can get there, she leans over to open the casket.

“I’m sorry, sweetheart. It’s not your fault.” She pulls out one of the black dresses and offers it to me. “A parting gift. It’ll be a nice treat for your next boyfriend. You’ll have to dye it, of course.”

I run the material through my fingers. It really does feel gorgeous.

“Dark green?” I suggest.

“With your hair, yes. Wear it with the jacket, obviously. Black shoes. And stockings, not tights. Siobhan — that’s my eldest — has just gone blonde, so I’ll do hers a deep red. Now Cathryn has darker skin, there’s a touch of the Mediterranean in her ancestry, I’m sure…”

She takes Helen Sutton’s notebook from her bag and begins to stow it back beneath the casket’s false bottom. Then her eye is caught by the jar containing the thick white cream.

They said one was a woman, half-naked and as bald as a billiard ball.

“Be careful with that,” I blurt out as she picks it up by the lid.

“Care to tell me why?” she wonders, adopting the quizzical expression I’m beginning to know all too well.

Not again! How can I land myself in so much bother with only one mouth?

“I, uh…I believe it might be a depilatory. Something Trisha said. It’s a long story.”

“That’s okay. We’ve still got a quarter of an hour until dinner.” She unscrews the top and dips her finger in the preparation. “So you think this removes unwanted hair, do you? Let’s see if you’re right.”

Her other hand has untied my dressing gown before I can utter a word in remonstration. The manner in which she puts my supposition to the test, a procedure she insists I reciprocate in full, is an experience I’ll be slow to forget.

But compared to the inquisition I undergo after I reveal the full details of my conversation with Trisha it’s a slice of Battenberg.